25 August,2010 07:25 AM IST | | Vatsala Shirangi
It was a portrait of the King that changed my life forever. In school and na ve, I had looked at the man himself, Elvis Presley, as he looked back at me through the watercolour portrait and got me hooked. Little did I know then that I would not only be hooked, but booked and cooked by the man who made a trillion hearts flutter by a simple pelvic thrust!
So what was it? The spark in his eyes, the watch on his wrist or those sensuous lips on that debonair face that made me his? All of them, I guess. In matters of the heart, who needs clinical details? And thus started my affair with Elvis Presley.u00a0
It has been a long and satisfying relationship since then. Sometimes he would come to me in the form of Amitabh Bachchan in the 1985 flick Yaarana singing Sara Zamana dressed in a jumpsuit studded with miniature bulbs. At other times, he would sneak up secretly as Mithunda in Disco Dancer in his signature outfit (partly looking like Donny Osmond). On days when he was in a humorous mood, he would pay me a visit pretending to be Bappi Lahiri complete with big dark glasses and loads of gold everywhere. Okay, the last avatar did little to turn me on. But still I would be reminded of him.
And guess what, all these years later, he still hasn't left me. Every time I cross a corner thinking of an artiste who just did a live performance, it takes me back to Elvis on stage. Then I happen to lay my hands on the DVD Elvis Has Left The Building and he is back to being mine. The film, funnily enough, has Kim Basinger falling in love with Elvis and then going about accidentally killing people who are Elvis impersonators. Thankfully, I suffer from no such destructive syndrome!
As life and luck would have it, Elvis is now a dream come true. The man I love simply has to remind me of him. If not in the way he dresses or wears his sideburns, then in the way he is ufffd the swagger, the style, the
laughing through the eyes. It's the way he makes the world his fiefdom. Could I have found a better Elvis impersonator? I guess not. This is no impersonation, but the King himself in the way I want him.
u00a0
So, as the world mourned the death of a dream this August 16, I remembered how Elvis was a dream in the mind of an innocent girl who fell for her man through his portrait. The rock-and-roll star was a phenomenon and continues to be. It's been 33 years since his death. Thankfully, I get to meet him everyday.
